


The Temporary Ambition of Generous Messiahs

by QuietLittleVoices



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Community: deancasbigbang, F/M, Gen, Hopeful/Happy Ending, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 04:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2533601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester knew that he was not fit to be Heaven’s Righteous Man, or their Michael’s true vessel, or anything else, for that matter. He wasn’t fit to go hunting with his estranged brother, Sam - a man he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. And he really wasn’t fit to be having discussions on the meaning of love and free will with an angel. All he wanted to do was stay dead, or be given the space he needed to grieve. But luck wasn’t on Dean Winchesters’ side.</p>
<p>AU in which Sonny sent John away at Dean’s request. Dean took Robin to the dance that night, and years later he married her. Only, the course of love never does run smooth and sometimes life steps in. Robin got sick, and she was dying, so Dean did the only thing he knew how to do - sell his soul, getting five years for his trouble. A month after his deal came due, Robin passed away. Three months later, Dean woke up in the cemetery he’d been buried in. Lost and confused, Dean is told he’s supposed to stop the apocalypse. </p>
<p>"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (Corinthians, 5:21)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Temporary Ambition of Generous Messiahs

Breathe in.

His chest filled and expanded so rapidly it was almost painful; his ribs, lungs, and muscles not used to the reflexive motion. His eyes snapped open and the residual light blinded him like the after effects of the flash on a camera. He blinked once, twice, again – until the spots of light danced and faded away, leaving only darkness.

Dean was familiar with warm, suffocating darkness. Welcomed it, even, after the light nearly burnt out his eyes. He took a few deep, steady breaths – easier, now, than the first one – before he came to two realizations.

One: He was in much too small a space to have oxygen for much longer.

Two: He’d died. He didn’t know how long ago, but he knew that it had happened. He knew he’d been in Hell for a long time, though he didn’t know for sure just how long it had been.

And so Dean Winchester dug himself out of his grave.

 

At the surface there was, predictably, a cemetery. Lying on the cold earth, he looked up at the open blue sky and laughed. A real laugh, for the first time in a long time. He’d laughed before the hounds had come for him, but after that there wasn’t reason. Hell wasn’t exactly ‘funny’.

When Dean finally sat up, he looked at the headstone – his headstone. His name, his birth and death dates, and simply ‘ _Beloved husband, brother, and son_. _Blood is not what makes a family_.’ He found himself laughing at that, too. Not because it was funny, but because he was glad that he was able to laugh again. It verged on hysterical, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he sat in the morning dew, breathing in the sunlight.

Dean stood up all the way and gave a futile attempt at brushing himself off as he swayed on unsteady legs. He was in the same clothes that he’d died in; torn jeans, a Henley, and an old plaid shirt. Closed-casket funeral, he figured; there wouldn’t have been much left of him after the dogs had had their fun.

 

The first place he went was Sonny’s. Not wanting to scare anyone, since he knew coming back from the dead wasn’t a common occurrence, he waited until nightfall. And then he knocked on the window to Sonny’s bedroom.

It was opened by a disgruntled looking man with a ponytail and glasses. Dean was also greeted by a splash of holy water and salt to the face.

“I’m me,” Dean reassured the older man.

“Just makin’ sure.” Sonny grunted as he reached forwards and pulled Dean into the room.

 

“How long’s it been?” Dean asked after he’d used the shower, munching on a snack bar Sonny had grabbed him from the kitchen.

“Four months,” Sonny said soberly. “Robin, she… she passed away a week after you died.”

Dean bit his lip, trying to push down the emotions that threatened to surge up and suffocate him. Making deals was a tricky business, and he’d never asked that she’d _stay_ alive after the contract had run out. He realized now, too late, that he should have been more specific, should have made sure she’d live out a long and happy natural life. He should have done a lot of things that he didn’t, but it was too late for any of them, so he pushed the thoughts away for another time. “Anything else?” he asked, clearing his throat.

Sonny shook his head. “Four months isn’t that long, Dean, and it was summer.”

“What do I do now?” Dean asked, because Sonny always knew the answer to those kinds of things.

The older man looked unsure. For the first time, Dean saw the signs of age on his face. When Sonny finally answered, his mouth was set in a grim line. “We gotta figure out why you’re back.”

 

Sonny told everyone that he had an errand to run out of town, then he took Dean in his truck to see a psychic. Her named was Pamela Barnes, and she answered the door wearing flare jeans and a ripped Ramones shirt, showing off her midriff. Her face spoke of many happy years, with upturned lines in the corners of her eyes and mouth. Dean wondered if Robin would have had happy lines on her face if she’d been given more time. He hoped so.

“I’m gonna need to touch something that it touched,” said the psychic as they sat around the small table. It was covered in a decorated purple cloth and there was a crystal ball in the middle. (‘For the customers,’ she’d said when she’d caught them looking at it. ‘They want the whole nine-yards. It’s hollow; got it at a hobby shop.’)

Dean pushed up his shirt sleeve to reveal an angry red handprint, slightly raised from the rest of his skin. He’d noticed it during his shower and had tried not to dwell on what a human handprint on him might entail.

Pamela nodded and fitted her hand over it, reaching out with the other to take Sonny’s right hand, and then nodding at them to join hands across the table. She took a deep breath before letting her eyes close. “I invoke, conjure, and command you; appear unto me before this circle.”

She repeated the line a few times before she cocked her head to the side, as if listening to something that neither Dean nor Sonny couldn’t hear. “Castiel?” she said uncertainly, testing the name on her tongue. She chuckled humourlessly. “Sorry, _Castiel_ ,” she spoke the name almost mockingly. “I don’t scare that easy.”

Dean felt his eyebrows pull together. “Castiel?” he asked. The name felt strange in his mouth, like it was too big – too powerful.

“Its name,” she murmured, head still turned slightly to the side with her eyes shut. “It’s warning me to turn back.” He could see her eyes roll behind her lids as she shook her head lightly, brown hair tumbling over her shoulders as she laughed lightly. And then it was like a switch was flipped and she was back to business, sitting up straight with her head faced forwards. “I conjure and command you; show me your face.”

The table started to shake and the radio blared white noise. Sonny and Dean shared worried looks; this wasn’t normal.

Sonny looked around tentatively. “Pam? I think we should stop. I don’t think it wants to be seen.”

The sharp look she shot him was palpable, if not entirely visible with her shut eyes. “I almost got it,” she bit out at him, turning her head back to centre as if she was trained on the crystal ball in the middle of the table. If Dean didn’t know it was fake, he would have thought it was showing her the monster’s face. “I command you; show me your face! Show me your face _now_!”

Her body jerked forwards suddenly, like it was being pulled on a cord. A small noise was ripped from her throat before a blood curdling scream followed it out. Her head flung back, eyes opening, and flames shot out of her eyes.

Dean and Sonny were shocked to stillness, but it was all over in a matter of seconds and Pamela slumped down in her chair, breathing hard and heavy. There was blood on her face and blackened holes where her eyes should have been.

Sonny ran to her side first, easing her down to the floor. He turned to Dean. “Call an ambulance. Now!”

 

Dean’s eyes shot up when Sonny walked into the hospital cafeteria looking worn and haggard. The older man sat himself down in the old metal chair with a huff of air. They sat like that in silence for a few minutes, neither of them moving. Dean looked down into his coffee, if it could even be called that. Sludge in a paper cup; the heat had drained out long ago. Robin had always told him to get hot chocolate instead, if he complained about hospital coffee so much, and Dean would just smile at her and buy another coffee. Buying hot chocolate would have meant he was expecting to suffer through more cups of the shit at 2AM while Robin went to MRI’s and CAT scans and having a hundred other things done to her. Buying hot chocolate meant giving in, and he wasn’t going to do that. Not ever. Except when he did.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Sonny said, voice too loud in the quiet room.

There was a couple sitting at a corner table, Styrofoam cups clutched in their hands as they bent their heads towards each other, seeking comfort. Dean could see the steam still rising off their cups; they’d only been there for ten minutes. Dean wondered why; was it one of them? A child? A mother, a father, an aunt, an uncle? Whoever it was, Dean hoped they’d be okay soon.

“What about her eyes?” Dean asked, finally turning to look at Sonny. His voice was low, gruff from not having spoken in what felt like forever. It had been thirty minutes, at most, but Dean was stuck in a loop in his head. All he could think about was Robin, and how she had to live her final month without him there in the hospital cafeteria, waiting with a cup of coffee for him (black), and a hot chocolate for her (some milk to cool it down). All those years ago, she’d already given up.

Sonny looked down at his hands, palms tough and scarred from years of working at the farm. “Burnt out. She’s never going to see again.”

Dean bit the inside of his cheek and ran a finger over the top of his cup. The coffee was cold. He probably should have just gotten hot chocolate.

 

“What do we do now?” Dean asked, looking at Sonny over the roof of the truck in the parking lot.

Sonny opened the driver side door. “We find this ‘Castiel’ and ask him what his deal is.”

Dean nodded and got into the car.

 

Dean shook the spray can and got back to drawing sigils inside the barn. “We’re just gonna summon it here?” he asked incredulously. “After what it did to Pamela?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Sonny scoffed, looking into one of the old books they’d picked up.

The younger man considered that and shrugged. “Not really, no,” he admitted.

When they finished the sigils, they went to the metal table they’d set up near the back of the room and started to combine the ingredients needed to summon something. Dean lit the match, threw it in, and began reading over the spell. He was grateful that he’d taken a Latin course in college, a required course for part of his theology minor. Robin had taken the same course; it was the only one they’d had together that semester. Dean took a deep, steadying breath and reminded himself not to think of her.

The lights started to flicker when he was half way through the first verse. They cut out completely when the sound of heavy rain drummed against the tin roof. A cold fear gripped Dean’s core as the first peels of thunder echoed, and he wondered just _what_ they were summoning. But it was too late to turn back now, so he kept reading as the storm continued outside.

He’d barely finished uttering the last word when the doors to the barn flung themselves open, the lights, which had been off for the better part of five minutes, flickered back to life in an explosion of sparks and noise. The opening of the doors invited in the storm, strong winds pushing back on Sonny and Dean. They both raised their arms to protect themselves, and when they lowered them they saw a man entering the room.

The man was around Dean’s height, though more sleight in build. He wore a trench coat, and the shower of sparks lit up his dark hair like a halo.

“Who are you?” Dean called, projecting his voice to be heard over the noise of the storm still raging on.

All at once, the doors to the barn shut and it was quiet again, like they’d entered the eye of the storm. The man kept walking towards them and stopped when he was in front of Dean.

“My name is Castiel,” he said, voice gruff and deep like rolling thunder. “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Dean balked. “What would angels want with me? I’m a mechanic.”

The angel Castiel took another step towards him and, despite his height advantage, Dean felt threatened. There was power behind the calm blue eyes of the shorter man’s face; power that Dean couldn’t begin to comprehend. “Dean Winchester, you are the Righteous Man. And you will stop the apocalypse.”

“I’m a _mechanic_ ,” Dean repeated, sputtering.

If it was possible for an angel to look exasperated, this one did in that moment. “But you weren’t always that. You were raised a hunter. It’s time to return to that way of life, Dean.”

“I _died_!” Dean reminded him. “I died and went to _Hell_!”

“Yes, you did,” Castiel agreed. “And I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition. Now, it’s time to meet your brother.”

The angel reached towards Dean and he tried to move away, but Castiel’s hands wrapped around Dean’s wrist and –

They weren’t in the barn anymore. Suddenly, they were in an old motel room, the likes of which Dean hadn’t seen in a little over a decade. Sitting in the room was a man that Dean scarcely recognized – except that, no matter how many years passed, he knew he’d never not recognize Sammy.

The taller Winchester looked at Dean, shocked. “Who are you?” he asked, bewildered, reaching for his gun.

Dean put up his hands in defense. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, no need to be hasty there! It’s me, Sammy. It’s Dean.”

Sam looked sceptical. “How did you get in here? How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I…” Dean searched for something to say. “Remember when we were kids, and there was only one bowl of Lucky Charms left and I hadn’t had any, but you wanted it so I let you have it? And you gave me the decoder ring, but we already had that one?”

Water was splashed in his face and Dean blinked. He wiped it away with his hand to find it had been mixed with salt. Then there was a small object being tossed at him, and when Dean managed to catch it he realized it was a silver bullet. “Sam, I’m me. I promise. I’ll get out my driver’s licence and everything.”

“Let’s say I believe you,” the larger man said slowly, still keeping his distance from Dean. “Where have you been all these years? How did you get in here? _Why_ are you here – why now?”

“Slow down, hot stuff,” Dean cautioned, holding up his hands in a gesture of defense. “I can answer the first one, but the rest… I don’t really think I understand it myself.” He pulled out one of the chairs at the small table in the kitchenette. “When I went missing, I was at a boys’ home,” he started. Sam sat down, clearly intent on listening. “One night, Dad came to pick me up, but there was a big school dance and I had a date with this beautiful girl, Robin,” he smiled to himself. “Sonny, the guy who ran the place, he turned Dad away, told ‘im to come back for me another time… only, he never did. Seven years later, I married Robin. And that’s where I’ve been.”

Sam nodded. “And you’re back now… why?”

Dean bit his lip and shifted awkwardly. “That one’s… a longer story.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Robin, she was… she was dying, right, and I… couldn’t let her go. But I remembered; demon deals. They get you what you want and give you ten years. So I did that, but they only gave me five. And they were a good five years, Sammy,” he smiled sadly. “Best of my life, actually. And I died. But a few days ago, I woke up, and then Sonny and me, we summoned the thing that brought me back. He brought me here.”

“Why?”

“I’m not… I’m not sure. But I have nowhere else to go, Sammy; Robin’s dead. Might as well see you again.”

 

Dean didn’t sleep that night. He thought he managed to catch a few hours, but the motel bed was too lumpy and uncomfortable and he felt like he was going to pick up a disease just by being in the same room. So he got up, quietly, and walked outside the hotel room, where there sat a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. Dean remembered it from his childhood. He ran a nostalgic hand along the car’s hood as he walked out and onto the road.

He managed to find a gas station, a beacon of light in the middle of the night, and he bought a pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked since he was in his early twenties, but now seemed like a good time to pick up the habit. If he ever deserved a pass, after all, it was now.

So he walked out of the corner store, a small paper box like a lead weight in his pocket, and he went back to the motel. He sat down on the small bench outside of the door and took his lighter and the newly purchased cigarettes out of his pocket. With a quick, practised flick of his wrist, he lit up and put the cigarette between his lips. After a deep breath in, he blew the smoke out of his mouth, watching it twist and curl into the night.

A flutter of wings interrupted his train of thought. He knew without looking that an angel sat beside him on his bench.

“What are you doing here?” Dean asked, taking another pull from his cigarette.

“It’s my job to keep you safe,” Castiel told him bitterly. “You’re on a destructive path and I cannot have this become a habit.”

Dean nodded, blowing out another cloud of smoke. “Babysitter duty, sounds like a sweet deal.” He lifted the cigarette to his lips once more but Castiel reached over and removed it, dropping it to the ground and stepping on the tip to make sure it was fully extinguished. Dean scowled. “I’m a big boy; I can take care of myself. I didn’t _ask_ to be brought back to life, you know.”

Castiel gave him a hard look, eyes narrowing. “You will do as you’re told. You will return to Sam, and await our orders.”

“What if I don’t _want_ to stop the apocalypse, or whatever it is you want me to do?” Dean asked petulantly. He sounded childish even to his own ears.

“You don’t have a choice; it is your duty. We will let you rest in heaven after your job is done.”

The man let out a deep sigh and leaned back, letting his head rest against the brick façade of the motel and his heels reach the concrete block to stop the cars from rolling into the wall. “Why couldn’t you have left me down there? Why not use Sam? He’s probably lots better at… hunting and shit than I am.”

“There is no other way, Dean; you are the Righteous Man. Await our orders.”

“What does that even mean?” Dean asked, the question ripped from some deep, scared place in him. But he was alone; the angel was gone. Dean cursed and stood up. He kicked the cigarette butt, digging his toe into the ground slightly to catch it so it went flying. He watched it hit the wheel of the Impala before he returned to the room.

 

After Castiel left, Dean managed to catch a few hours of sleep. Enough, at least, that when he woke up, the sun had already risen and Sam was awake and dressed.

Dean blinked and stretched. “What time is it?” he slurred, voice still thick. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, realizing just how badly he needed a drink.

Sam glanced at his watch. “Six, why? I was just going for a run. I’ll be back in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Have fun,” Dean muttered as Sam left. He rolled onto his back and covered his eyes with a groan. Slowly, he got up, his muscles feeling like rubber bands pulled tight. He was sore in places he barely even knew he _had_ , thanks to the damn motel bed.

By the time Dean was showered, he realized that he had nothing. He was still wearing the same clothes as the day before, so he just put them back on, feeling uncomfortable and unclean. But Sam had returned from his run, looking awake and ready to face the day.

“I’m heading to a case a few towns over,” the younger Winchester said. “I guess I have to bring you along, huh?”

Dean nodded. “Sorry; I know I’m not much help. But Heaven’s Favourite Babysitters are gonna keep me here, so….” He shrugged. “Could we stop by a Target? I need to buy some shit – _shit_.” He patted his pockets. “I don’t have cash or anything. Spot me?”

Sam routed around in his own pockets and pulled out a credit card that he tossed to Dean. “Michael Wesson’ll buy you all you need.”

Dean fumbled with the card, but managed to catch it and put it in his pocket. “Awesome. Let’s go.”

 

Dean bought a duffle bag, a few flannels, a few cotton shirts, some jeans, and the necessities. He threw the bag into the backseat with Sam’s and got into the passenger seat. He tried not to think about the house he and Robin had bought together, tried not to think about home. He bought coffee at the diner they stopped at, and it was warm and fresh but Dean felt cold.

 

“So what’s the case?” Dean asked in the car later.

Sam flipped his turn signal on and did a quick shoulder check before turning left. “Uh… nothing much. Just a haunting at an old house. I figure it’s the guy who hung himself there a few years back, so I’m gonna torch his bones and then hang around a few days to see if that does it.”

Dean nodded. “Sounds easy enough; I can handle that,” he said, mostly to himself.

“I’m sure you can,” Sam muttered. Dean wasn’t sure whether or not he was being sarcastic. He decided to leave it.

 

Dean was in good shape; he knew he was. Before hell, the gym saw him a few times every week, and he ate well. That didn’t mean he was in _grave digging_ shape. Before he’d been sent to Sonny’s in his teen years, he’d only dug a few graves, and the years had made him forget just how hard it was, just how dirty, and just how long it took.

He was breathing hard and coated in dirt by the time the sun rose, but Sam was still cool and collected. The younger Winchester poured some salt and gasoline on the bones before dropping nearly an entire motel matchbook down after it. They watched the flames climb up and out for a few tranquil moments before returning to the impala and driving back to the motel.

“You go first, old man,” Sam muttered good-naturedly, clapping Dean on the shoulder and pushing him towards the bathroom.

Dean chuckled to hide a wince. “Yeah, yeah; I’m not that old yet. You try gettin’ out of Hell and being all back in working order.”

Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t respond, so Dean took his cue to leave.

When he locked the door of the bathroom, he stripped slowly; methodically. He was careful of his aching joints, and his sweat made his shirt stick to his back almost painfully. He turned the water temperature up as hot as it would go, which wasn’t very hot at all, and got in. The water pressure was absolute shit, sliding against his skin instead of pounding on the tensed muscles of his back like he wanted. With a sigh, he started to wash up, trying not to use entire bottles of free shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.

He scrubbed with a washcloth until all the traces of dirt were gone from the creases of his skin, and then he turned off the shower and got out. Dean towelled off easily, just patting himself down before pulling on a fresh set of clothes. They didn’t smell like Robin’s favourite laundry detergent, but they were clean and dry and he was going to take what he could get. And he wasn’t going to think of her. Dean wondered if this was what her life was like that last month, and then quickly dispelled the thought; he had to stop thinking like that.

Dean rubbed his hair with the towel as he exited the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

“You better not have used all the hot water,” Sam muttered, pushing past him before he was even completely out the door and shutting it. Dean jumped at the slam of the door directly behind him and muttered a few choice obscenities under his breath.

 

They stayed in town for a few days after that, and though there was a newspaper article about the grave desecration, there didn’t seem to be anything haunting the old house anymore.  So they left.

 

Sam tapped out a jilted rhythm against the steering wheel, like the Morse code of a forgotten phrase. “So,” he said, breaking the stillness of the highway. The single syllable felt like a release of pressure; like the valve had been opened so the tension could dissipate. “When’s the God Squad gonna come put you on track?”

Dean shot Sam a confused look; had he mentioned that it had been angels that had saved him? He shrugged off the thought, realizing that he must have said something about it. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here,” he said honestly. “I want this to be over just as much as you do, Sam. If this is even half as awkward on your end, then you understand. But I don’t have a _choice_.”

“I could leave you with Bobby. We’re in South Dakota now; I’ll just make a swing down to Sioux Falls and drop you off,” Sam suggested.

That brought a scowl to Dean’s face. “I know I’m not a good hunter, but I’m not a child in need to babysitting.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Listen, Dean, you’re my brother. We grew up together, but you haven’t hunted since you were sixteen. You’re a liability; you could get both us killed. I’m gonna leave you with Bobby; call me when he thinks you’re ready to hunt again.”

Dean tried not to act like a petulant child for the rest of the car ride. He failed.

 

Bobby hugged him when they got to the salvage yard. Dean was surprised and, for a moment, frozen in place, but when he came back to himself, he hugged the old man back with all he had.

“You grew up good, boy,” Bobby said gruffly as they pulled away.

Dean swallowed thickly and nodded. Sam rolled his eyes and, after shaking hands with Bobby, got back into the Impala and drove away.

“What crawled up his ass and died?” Dean wondered aloud.

“He likes being on the road,” Bobby explained, leading Dean into the house on the salvage yard. “Never was one to settle down. But I hear you did; found yourself a wife and all the works. What’s got you back here?”

“I died.”

 

Castiel finds him on the back porch with a beer in his hands.

“Lucifer is using his demons to try and break out of the depths of hell and wreak havoc on Earth,” the angel deadpanned.

Dean snorted. “Hello to you, too, Cas.”

The angel tilted his head and squinted his eyes at the nickname, but made no comment. “I’m trying to explain to you why we need you,” he offered.

“I figured that much. C’mon, take a seat.” Dean patted next to him on the bench.

After a moment’s deliberation, Castiel sat down next to him, pulling his trench coat around his thighs. He looked confused and out of place, with no idea of what to say.

Dean bumped their knees together and Cas looked at him in confusion. The man raised an eyebrow. “Well? What’s this about Lucifer and Hell-on-Earth?”

Cas nodded like he was suddenly coming back from a daydream, but Dean knew that that couldn’t be the case. Angels didn’t ‘daydream’; they probably didn’t even think. “Lucifer wants to return to Earth and start the apocalypse. Lilith, his first demon, is the one in charge. They seem to have found a back door, if you will. If they break sixty-six seals – trials that act like locks on Lucifer’s cage – then he’ll be free. You must stop her at all costs.”

“Why me?” Dean asked. He wondered how many people daily asked that question. How many people right that minute. He wondered what their troubles where. Maybe they were locked out of their apartments; maybe they were late for their shift. Maybe they’d just had their first break up; their thousandth; maybe they’d finally given up on love. Maybe they were sitting in a hospital room next to someone who looked like a shadow; next to someone who was already gone, but still breathing.

Thousands of people asking the same question, and Dean was willing to bet he was the only one sitting next to a bona fide angel. But the angel didn’t answer his question; just sat there in the porch light like a living, breathing anachronism.

“Do you want a beer?” Dean asked awkwardly after his last question went unanswered for a few minutes.

Cas glanced at the brown bottle in Dean’s hands. He grabbed it from him and took a sip before Dean could protest. As he swallowed, his features twisted just slightly in disgust but otherwise were contemplative. “I don’t think I liked that,” he murmured speculatively as Dean retook his bottle.

He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. “Yeah, buddy, I don’t think you liked it. We’ll have to start you on the fruity drinks; they’re better for beginners.”

“I have been on this earth for a millennia –” Cas started.

“And you’ve never been drunk,” Dean interrupted. “Don’t say anything; we both know it’s true. _Can_ you even get drunk? Isn’t it like… a sin, or something?”

Cas looked at him with the squinty-eyed look again. “Drinking alcohol is not a sin, Dean. Though I suppose it would be rather difficult for me to become intoxicated.”

Dean laughed and shook his head before standing up. Confused blue eyes followed him. “I’m too drunk for this. Shooting the breeze with an angel.” He shook his head again and let out a huff of air, turning his face towards the sky. “This is my life,” he told no one in particular. Having an angel sitting next to him on an old porch in a salvage yard in South Dakota was really making him wonder if anyone was listening. He doubted it.

Castiel stood. “Do you… wish me to leave?” he asked, looking uncertain.

“Do what you want, man,” Dean said with a shrug. “I’m not gonna stop you; you could probably kill me with a thought.” He turned back towards the house and opened the screen door. When he glanced over his shoulder, all he saw were rows of beat up cars, and outside his island of light there was nothing.

 

“You’re gonna start by shooting cans,” Bobby suggested.

Dean scowled and took the gun from the old man. “I’ve been hunting, you know. Deer hunting and stuff. I can fire a gun.”

Bobby looked at him incredulously. “Then you won’t have a problem shooting those cans, will you?”

The younger man sighed and turned the safety off on the gun. He leveled it with the first can, using the sights. Breathe in. Shoot. Breathe out. The bullet pierced the logo on the rusted can, pushing it back and off the small log.

He felt his chest tighten as he lined up the next shot – memories of taking Robin out to the woods and teaching her how to shoot cans. He’d put his arms around her, his large, calloused hands covering her smaller, though equally calloused, ones.

Breathe in. Shoot. Breathe out. Bullet landing off-center; can toppling over.

She giggled and melted in against him, missing every shot on purpose. Then the second he stepped back, she hit them all without batting an eye, and told him that her father had taken her shooting before, and honestly, Dean, just because she was a girl, why shouldn’t she know how to shoot?

Breathe in. Her laughter ringing in his ears. Shoot. The forest towering around them. Breathe out. Her smile as she kissed him.

The bullet missed. The windshield shattered.

Dean was startled from his memory by the glass, so he quickly put the safety back on as Bobby gave him a concerned look.

“Are you sure you’re alright, boy?”

Dean pressed his teeth together and pushed all thoughts of Robin out of his mind. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m… I’m fine.” The words tasted like poison in his mouth; they weighed heavy on his tongue. Dean wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince, but he knew it didn’t work.

 

“I don’t think he’ll ever be ready to hunt, Sam.”

Dean stopped cold outside the kitchen doors when he hears Bobby speak. He hides and listens to the silence, as Sam is obviously speaking on the other end.

“We were just shootin’ cans and he couldn’t do it,” Bobby explained. “He got… distracted. Like there was something there that I couldn’t see. I think what’s best for him right now is some bed rest; if he forces the huntin’, he’ll never be ready.” There’s another pause, and then, “I don’t care what the ‘angels’ say! That boy _ain’t ready_.”

Dean made heavy steps as he walked into the kitchen. Bobby quickly shut his mouth and said goodbye to Sam, telling the younger Winchester to keep safe.

“That was Sam,” Bobby told him unnecessarily.

“If I’m not ready to hunt, what do you want me to do?” Dean asked, ignoring the older man. His voice was quiet but angry, his body language tensed like a coil.

Bobby sighed. “Just rest up. Eat, sleep, watch The Ellen Show; I don’t care. You’re traumatized, okay? It’s clear to anyone who _looks_ at you that you’ve been through the meat grinder. You’re in no shape to, what? Save the world?”

“According to the angel that pulled me out, yeah,” Dean admitted. “I don’t have a choice in this, Bobby; I sold my soul, remember? I might have it back now, but I’m still _theirs_. I’m waiting on _their_ orders – I don’t even know if what I’ve been told is true.”

“And this angel – Castiel – he just… pops in from time to time?” Bobby asked.

Dean shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”

 

Castiel reappeared that night by Dean’s bedside. The man awoke with a start when he realized he was being watched. “Cas, man, you can’t _do_ that,” he cautioned, heart beating fast and breathing coming in pants and huffs.

The angel tilted his head to the side in an already familiar gesture of confusion. “What is it I’m doing that you find uncomfortable?”

“Watching me _sleep_.”

“Would you rather I have woken you?” Cas looked genuinely interested in the answer.

Dean sighed. “Yes – no – I don’t know! Just don’t… do… that….” He trailed off as he realised how pointless his words were. Dean ran a hand through his hair and wished he could go back to sleep. He waved a hand in a universal ‘go on’ gesture. “Just, speak.”

After a moment, the angel complied. “We need your help. The demon Alistair is attempting to break one of the seals.”

“Okay.” Dean pitched himself out of bed, and promptly realized he was only wearing a pair of boxers. “Would you mind… going somewhere else for a minute? I need to put on clothes.”

If possible, the angel looked slightly sheepish. “I’ll return shortly.” He disappeared with a flutter of wings and Dean let out a sigh of relief to once again be alone.

He showered quickly and threw on a set of clothes. Cas returned as he was pulling his button up on, and grabbed his arm.

Within moments, they were standing in a motel room, similar to the last one he’d been zapped into. All motel rooms were the same, anywhere in the country, after all. And, as before, Sam was in this one. But this time, Cas didn’t leave as soon as he arrived.

Sam looked at them, startled. “What’s up?” he asked tentatively.

“You’re here because you noticed no one was dying,” Cas stated, looking at Sam. The younger Winchester just nodded slowly, so Castiel continued. “The demon Alistair has two reapers hostage somewhere in town, but the angels cannot see them because he has the building warded. We need you two to find him and stop him from killing them.”

“You can’t see a reaper unless you’re dying,” Sam pointed us out. “How are we supposed to find them?”

Cas reached into a pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a leather sack. “African Dream Root. You brew it like tea leaves and drink it; it will put you into a trance, and you will experience something akin to being ‘out of your body’.  For all intents and purposes, you’ll be inside the veil.” He handed the bag to Dean, closing the man’s fingers around the bag and looking into his eyes imploringly. “Pray for me should you require assistance.” And then he was gone.

Dean looked around the motel room. “I guess we need a kettle.”

 

“That was _disgusting_ , but I don’t think it worked,” Dean muttered, setting down his tea cup.

Sam grimaced, giving his cup a weary glance. “Yeah. I don’t think I’m ‘in the veil’ or anything. I just regret drinking that.”

Dean couldn’t help but laugh as he stood up… and looked down to realize he could see himself asleep on the motel bed. “Or… yeah, that worked.” He shivered dramatically. “That’s creepy.”

The younger Winchester shrugged and turned towards the door. “Might as well start looking now. C’mon.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Dean followed.

 

Adjusting to being invisible to those they could see was… bizarre, to say the least. More than once, Dean went to give a stranger a small smile or an awkward-but-socially-necessary greeting, but then he remembered that they weren’t looking at him. They were looking _through_ him. It reminded him of Before, when he was with his father and Sammy; always the new kid, always on display, but he always put on a face. He put on a show for anyone watching; played the bad boy so no one would look too close, no one would ask any questions. But then he met Robin and she brought him out, made him realize that he was actually pretty great, underneath.

And now he was invisible again, though much more literally than before.

Sam turned and looked at him questioningly. “What’re you waiting for?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “We gotta find this demon guy and save the reapers.”

Dean snapped out of his fit of nostalgia and nodded. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he muttered, picking up the pace to match the one set out by the taller man.

 

It took two hours to find the modest brownstone that was covered, from top to bottom, in glowing sigils. Though neither Dean nor Sam understood exactly what they said, they knew that the sigils were for protection, and to keep whatever was inside shielded from the angels.

They stood on the front steps and looked at each other for a moment, before Sam shrugged and pushed open the door. His hand travelled to his waistband before he seemed to realize that guns didn’t work when they weren’t on the corporeal plane.

Even though they were ghosts and wouldn’t make a sound they both trod quietly through the house, following the sound of voices they could hear from the main room. Once there, they saw two bodies lying in the center of a circle, and a man standing over them, chanting.

Both Sam and Dean were at a loss for what to do – since they were incorporeal, they couldn’t affect anything. Sam crept into the room while Dean stood and watched. The younger Winchester started to speak in Latin, though Dean had a hard time figuring out what he was saying. Sure, he’d taken a course of it in college, but that had been years ago. He knew only the basics of the language now.

The demon turned and snarled at Sam, eyes black. He flicked his wrist and Sam, despite the fact that he didn’t have a body, went flying into the wall, hitting a candlestick on the wall and evaporating. _Iron_ , Dean realized.

Dean watched as the demon turned back to his work and restarted his chanting, unsure of what to do. He wasn’t trained for this; he didn’t even know how to exorcise the demon. He didn’t know _anything_ that would be useful, so he ran outside and scrubbed at one of the sigils until it was smudged and no longer as crisp and clean as it had been.

“Cas, I don’t know what to do!” he called into the empty street. A teenager with a baggy sweater and a cigarette walked past him without looking up, and Dean ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Goddammit,” he muttered, kicking the wall of the building. His foot passed right through. “Cas, you said I should call you if I need help. Well, I need help! I _told_ you, I don’t know what to do!”

When Dean glanced around, he was still alone. So, with no other choice, he turned back to the house to find Sam walking out.

“Where did you go?” the taller man asked, walking down the steps quickly.

Dean narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Did you just… deal with it? Alone?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m twenty-eight, dude. I’ve been handling this shit myself since I was sixteen. One demon? Not a big deal.”

“A demon that could hide themselves from all angels,” Dean protested. “And you’re sure it’s dealt with?”

“Yes, Dean, I’m sure.” He rolled his eyes and started to walk in the direction of their motel. “Now c’mon; I can hear you fretting from over here. Let’s get back in our bodies.”

 

Dean handed the gas station clerk a handful of change in exchange for a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He grimaced as he took his first sip, walking out the door. The cold air hit him hard and he shivered, pulling his shoulders in closer.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Jesus!” the man yelled, jumping to the side and pressing a hand against his chest, his coffee cup clattering to the gravel beneath their feet, spilling its contents everywhere. “You owe me another coffee,” he muttered, not intending to hold the angel to the promise.

Castiel held his head to the side and opened his mouth as if to make comment on something Dean had said, before shaking his head slightly and his expression turning neutral. “Did you eliminate the demon?”

Dean shrugged. “Sam said he did, yeah.”

“But did you _see_ that the demon was taken care of?” He looked as if the answer was of utmost importance.

“No, but I believe Sam,” Dean said with a shake of his head. “Hey, why didn’t you show up when I called?”

“I was indisposed,” Castiel answered slowly.

Dean snorted. “Is that angel talk for ‘doing things more important that dealing with you mud monkeys’?”

Castiel was shaking his head before the man had even finished talking. “Of course not! You are my charge, and my first priority. However, I was being detained by my superiors. They don’t understand that my priorities are different than theirs.”

“So I’m your ‘charge’?” Dean asked indignantly.

“Yes,” the angel answered plainly. “Were you expecting something else?”

“I dunno. With all your big talk to me saving the world, I thought it might be something… different,” he admitted.

“You are the righteous man,” Castiel confirmed, “however, you are also my charge. I will try to come the next time you call, but I cannot account for my superiors. I can return you to your brother.”

He reached out two fingers to touch Dean, but the man moved away. “Slow down, now. It’s not a far walk; I don’t wanna go through that if I don’t have to.”

“I will make sure you return safely, then,” Castiel said, making it clear that his mind was made up.

Looking out of place, the angel walked alongside the man. Dean had his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders up to shield from the wind, and Castiel stood with his back straight and his head up.  From his posture, Dean wouldn’t have been surprised to see wings coming out of his back; it almost looked unnatural without them. Incomplete.

“I do not have corporeal wings like you imagine,” Castiel said suddenly, breaking the cold stillness that Dean had wrapped himself in.

The man was startled from his reverie quickly. “You shouldn’t read people’s thoughts,” he said. “It’s impolite; there’s shit that people think that they just do not want other people to know.”

Castiel nodded gravely. “I will keep that in mind in the future,” he said. “The fact stands that I do not possess corporeal wings like those of the avian species on Earth. Without this vessel, I am just a wavelength of celestial intent. No more form than a radio wave, or a galaxy.”

“Modest,” Dean quipped. “So, what do ‘wavelengths of celestial intent’ do for fun?”

“We don’t have a concept of ‘fun’,” he informed the man. “We are soldiers of God; we do not need to amuse ourselves with recreation. We do not need the stimulation that humans do to function.”

Dean nodded slowly. “So, no fun? Ever?” He laughed. “I’m gonna take you to a bar. Tonight,” he decided. “As long as your ‘superiors’ don’t need to ‘detain’ you,” Dean added teasingly.

“I believe tonight is… feasible,” Castiel agreed hesitantly. “What is it you intend to do?”

“You’ll see.”

 

Dean waved for the waitress to give them both a beer. Cas was sitting next to him, looking uncomfortable and out of place.

The man grinned and gave him a quick shove, just intending to shake the tension out of the angel’s body, but managing instead to nearly dislodge him from his stool. “C’mon, lighten up,” Dean urged. “I just came back from hell to find the love of my life dead; you’re not the one who should be all serious.”

“I’m an angel of the Lord,” Castiel reminded him, accepting the beer that was slid over to him with a slight nod. After looking at it warily for a moment, he picked it up and sipped at it lightly. “Your wife, her name was Robin, correct?”

Dean nodded somberly, taking a swig of his drink and leaning forwards onto the bar. The wood was stained with age, and the rings of drinks without coasters decorated the surface almost like they were deliberate. He rubbed at one such mark absently, and though it didn’t make a difference, it was something for him to do. “Yeah, it was.” Dean laughed humourlessly and hung his head slightly. “She was… God, she was amazing. Beautiful, talented…. Everything I could have wanted. I’m lucky I had her, even though that’s over now.”

“You loved her very much,” Cas surmised, turning so that he had one elbow resting on the bar but was otherwise facing Dean.

The man nodded. “You could say that, yeah.” He sipped from his beer absently, looking at the back wall but clearly seeing something else – a memory, playing out behind his eyes.

“But you weren’t _in_ love with her, were you?”

When Dean’s head snapped up, Castiel was looking at him with questioning eyes. “What did I say about the mind-reading,” he grumbled. “I loved her more than anything, but….” He trailed off with a sigh. “For an angel who’s not supposed to feel, you seem to know about love.”

“Angels were designed to love all our Father’s creations; of course I’m familiar with different kinds of love,” Castiel scoffed.

Dean nodded slowly. “Makes sense I guess.” Another sip of beer. “Could we… not talk about this right now? I might not have been in love with her, but Robin was my best friend and I did love her, with all my heart. I feel like I’m disrespecting her memory,” he admitted.

“I’ve seen her heaven,” Castiel divulged. “I visited after I pulled you from hell. It’s full of memories of you; you made her very happy. But it was clear she always knew you cared for her in a different way than she cared for you, and she wants you to be able to move on.”

“Will I see her again?” Dean asked.

Castiel licked his lips. “I can’t answer that, though I doubt you will. The two of you weren’t soul mates; you’d only see her in your memories.”

“But you’ve… talked to her, right?”

The angel nodded. “Yes.”

Dean sucked in a breath and looked into Castiel’s blue eyes. “If you talk to her again… tell her I’m sorry. Tell her that I tired.”

Castiel smiled softly. “She knows.”

 

Dean breathed out and breathed her in. She gripped his arm, rubbing her thumb lightly to comfort him, and pushed their foreheads together. He reached up into the hospital bed with his other hand and gripped hers, tangling their fingers together. When he looked up at her, her eyes were closed, lips moving slightly. He knew she was saying a prayer.

“Hey,” he murmured, “it’s gonna be okay. You’ll get better and we’ll… we’ll go on that vacation, yeah? Hawaii. Greece. Hell, we can go to Minnesota – anywhere you like. You just gotta… you just gotta hold on a little bit longer, okay?”

Except he’d never actually said that. In reality, he’d just held her hand tighter and pretended not to hear the dry sobs shaking her frame. And when the doctors and come to take her into a surgery that could have proved fatal, he’d kissed her forehead and told her that he was going to get coffee. He’d be right back when she was done, he’d told her. In reality, he’d regretted every step he took in the opposite direction after not telling her that it was going to be okay. In reality, he’d gone out back of the hospital and summoned a demon.

But in this dream, he told her what he’d always meant to say and she smiled at him, unshed tears in her eyes. “Go get some hot chocolate while you wait,” she told him. The doctors took her away and Dean buried his head in his hands. This was only a dream, he knew logically, but it felt real.

When he looked up, Castiel was standing in the doorway, looking down the hallway. “You have been here many times,” he commented. “Is this when you sold your soul?”

Mutely, Dean nodded. He cleared his throat and stood up. “I don’t wanna talk about it, man. Why are you here?”

“I am unable to come to your location at the moment. My superiors in heaven seem to think I have grown too… close to you. However, I have a message to give you.” The angel’s posture shifted from uncomfortable to unsure to military-like. Dean felt himself shift to attention as he watched, a long-forgotten instinct that he’d almost eradicated. Deep down, he was still a soldier.

“Well, lay it on me,” Dean instructed, making a gesture like he was physically inviting something closer and shifting his weight to his back foot.

Instead of answering, Cas reached forwards and pressed a paper into Dean’s hand. “You’ll find me there.” And then he was gone, and Dean was waiting alone in a hospital room. With a sigh, Dean followed the dream where he knew he had to go – the cafeteria.

 

When Dean woke up, the feel of Styrofoam almost real against his lips, he was still holding the small, crumpled up piece of notepaper. He ran a hand over his face, trying to scrub away the too-clean feel of the hospital, and unfolded the paper carefully. In neat but unpractised script was an address, in a town that Dean new to be not far from the motel he was sitting in.

Slowly, as if his bones would crumble under too much pressure, he shifted off the bed and stumbled into the shower, leaving the scrap of paper behind. The hot water pounding the back of his neck, easing the tension from his shoulders. He sighed and tilted his head back, rubbing some cheap motel shampoo through his short hair, feeling the coarseness of it against his palm.

The water washed away the last remnants of sleep fog from his mind, his hospital dream washing down the drain as steam filled the room. When he got out of the shower, a pair of worn jeans hung down on his hips with the button undone, the note was gone. For a second, he was confused, before brushing it off as having just been part of his dream. He buttoned his pants up and pulled on socks before tossing a shirt on.

Sam walked into the motel room wearing running gear and looking flushed. “You ready to head off?” he asked, looking at Dean expectantly.

The older Winchester nodded, grabbing the straps of his duffel bag. “Sure. Breakfast first, though, right?”

“Whatever you want,” Sam said with a laugh. “There’s a good diner down the street we can go to; best waffles I’ve ever had.”

 

Dean chooses waffles at Sam’s insistence and he drowns them in syrup as soon as they hit the table in front of him. He spears a strawberry on the first bite, scoops up a bit of whipped cream, and shoves the bundle in his mouth.

“Hm,” he murmured appreciatively, considering the taste. Technically speaking, they’re the best waffles he’s ever had – they’re light and fluffy with the right amount of crunch, and the flavours contrast nicely with the strawberries on the plate. But Dean remembers Sunday mornings in a kitchen painted yellow with dense, salty waffles (she never did learn how to make them properly, not after years of making them).

He drowned the memories with black coffee, bitter but fresh on his tongue. The scent of it is rich and the cool porcelain rests against his lips softly.

“They’re good, right?” Sam asked with a grin, shoveling in a bite off his own plate. “Dad used to take me here all the time.”

Dean nodded. “What was he like? I remember some, but…” he shrugged. “That was fifteen years ago.”

“He did his best. You know, he really tried to do well by me. I spent a lot of time down in Sioux Falls with Bobby. They missed you a lot, I remember that. They both tried to contact you a few times after that, but you never returned any of their calls.”

“They tried to call me?” Dean interrupted, confused.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. When you turned eighteen, they called you almost every day, from what I understood. After that they slowed down, and then one day Bobby got a letter in the mail that told him you’d married some girl named Robin. He stopped calling after that, but Dad didn’t give up. He passed away a few years ago; demon attack. I think it was the one that killed mom, but I don’t know for sure.”

The words barely registered; Dean was still reeling with the fact that his father and Bobby had tried to get him again after he’d had Sonny send John away. “I didn’t know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said with a shrug. “You didn’t know; can’t really blame you for getting out of this life when you were just a kid, yeah? But you’re back now.”

Dean nodded and licked a bit of whipped cream off his lip. “I’m back now.”

 

He couldn’t help but notice that they were going in the opposite direction that had been indicated in the note he’d received in his dream.

“Where are we heading?” Dean asked idly.

“There’s a wendigo about another hour from here,” Sam answered easily, flashing his signal light and looking for oncoming traffic before merging. “Don’t you worry; if your angel buddy needs you, he’ll be able to find you.”

“But what if he can’t?”

Sam shrugged. “Then he’s not a very good angel, is he?”

 

Dean woke up in a cold sweat, breath coming fast and heart beating faster. After he managed to calm himself, he looked to the alarm clock and saw that it was just after three in the morning.

With a curse, he turned over and fluffed his pillow in an effort to regain a state of blissful unconsciousness, hopefully undisturbed by nightmares until at least the sun was up. He tossed and turned a few times before giving up and pushing himself out of bed, slipping into a pair of jeans and socks before padding out the door to the motel. He only briefly glanced over at the other bed to make sure Sam was alright before closing the door behind himself.

When Dean turned towards the open parking lot, he was almost immediately confronted with two angels. One was Castiel, looking for all his worth like the embodiment of quiet celestial rage. Dean could see it bubbling behind blue eyes, contained and controlled and nothing like any of the other times Dean had seen him. The other man was taller and larger. He stood with his hands clasped in front of himself as if he was comfortable, standing in the parking lot of a nowhere motel before sunrise.

The artificial streetlights cast a falsely cheerful glow on the angels. Shadows played along their bodies and Dean swore that when he looked at them just right he could see halos.

Dean ran a hand over his hair nervously. “What do you want?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound stronger than he felt.

“We still need your help, Dean Winchester,” the unknown man said, his voice deep and rolling like the threat of an oncoming storm. It shook Dean to the bones.

“I got that,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice casual to mask his own fear. “What do you want _specifically_?”

Cas steps forwards and Dean’s eyes drifted towards him. “Another seal has been broken. There aren’t many left; there’s no _time_. You and your brother need to stop wasting yourselves on _hunts_ like this and focus on the bigger picture.”

Dean felt himself go on the defensive before starting towards Cas. “We do this so we don’t lose our minds _waiting_! You don’t have a _concept_ of how time passes, do you? It’s different for you than it is for us – you leave us waiting. Do you expect us to just sit still and wait? Because I sure as hell am not waiting for the apocalypse to come down; I’m gonna take as many monsters out before the end as I can.”

“You might save a handful of people tomorrow,” Cas said, “but if you don’t manage to stop the apocalypse you’ll kill _everyone_. Everyone you’ve saved, everyone they’ve ever known – everything will end.”

“If you don’t tell me what you want, what other choice do I have?” Dean curled his toes in his shoes and shoved his hands in his pockets. He wished for a cigarette. “I was just in Hell, I learnt that the woman I sold my soul for is dead, and I haven’t been a hunter since I was sixteen. I’m not cut out for this apocalypse-stopping stuff, but Sam is. Why don’t you use him instead of me?”

The unknown man spoke up again. “Because you are to Michael what he is to Lucifer. You _both_ are involved in the apocalypse, but you’re the one we need to stop it. You are Michael’s true vessel, Dean Winchester. We need you.”

“What if I say no?”

“You won’t,” Castiel said with certainty.

Dean groaned and tilted his head back to look at the stars. “Why are you guys here?”

“We need you and Samuel to leave here and go to Lawrence, Kansas. We will give you further instruction once you have arrived.” The man disappeared as soon as he was done speaking.

“Who was he?” Dean asked, turning his gaze from the stars to Castiel.

“Uriel.” Cas took a step closer to Dean, looking unsure of how the other man was going to react. “Why didn’t you come to the warehouse like I’d asked you?” If angels could feel, Dean would’ve sworn Cas looked heartbroken. But that wasn’t possible.

“When did you ask?”

“Last night, in your dream. I gave you a note, but you never came.”

Dean thought back to the night before. He tried to recall his dream and failed, only being able to recapture the smell of a hospital and the taste of stale coffee. But there was a note, when he woke up. Or at least, he thought there had been. But it had disappeared. So it couldn’t have been real, because where could it have gone? “There was no note, Cas. I don’t know what you mean.”

The angel’s face fell. “I’ll leave you, then. Go back to sleep.”

When Cas disappeared, Dean walked to the nearest convenience store and bought himself a pack of cigarettes.

 

Sam made them go into the woods and kill the Wendigo before getting on the road and going down to Kansas. Dean slept for almost the whole ride, exhausted from both the late night visit and the hunt that morning. He woke up in time to see the _Welcome to Lawrence_ sign go by them, blue, tan, and dark brown still dancing in his sleep-fogged vision. With a yawn, he rubbed his face and sat up straight.

“You know, we were born here,” he said, voice still rough. Dean smacked his lips together a few times before reaching into the back to pull out a water bottle, only to remember that this wasn’t his car and he didn’t keep a case of them behind the driver’s seat.

Sam nodded. “Dad told me, yeah. We used to come here sometimes to pay our respects to mom.”

Dean felt his brow pull together in confusion. “She was buried in Illinois.”

“Her grave is there, sure, but there was never anything to bury. It was easier to pay our respects somewhere we knew she’d been than somewhere she never was,” Sam said with a shrug.

Dean nodded as if he understood, even though he didn’t. He didn’t understand why they would have been against honouring Mary at the closes thing there was to a shrine for her, didn’t understand why they’d come back to this town if they didn’t have to.

“Do you know why the angels wanted us to come here?” Sam asked, breaking into Dean’s train of thought.

The older Winchester shook his head. “They’re not a chatty bunch, you know.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Sam smirked and glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sam shrugged, the small smile not falling from his face. “Oh, nothing. Just that you’ve talked to that angel, Castiel, a few times now, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, ‘cause they’re trying to get me to stop their apocalypse for them.”

“Bobby said you were drinking beer with him on the back porch. Doesn’t really seem like necessary in the line of duty for an angel.”

Dean rolled his eyes and leaned back. “What’re you saying here, Sam? The dude showed up while I was having a beer, told me about the apocalypse, and fluttered off. Not big stuff, dude.”

Sam shrugged. “If that’s what you say.”

“Yeah, it’s what I say; that’s what _happened_.” Or was it? Dean thought back to the night on the porch. Yes, they’d only talked about the apocalypse, of that he was relatively certain, but then there was the night in the bar. He pushed the conversation on love out of his mind and glared at Sam. Dean could practically _hear_ the expression on his brother’s face. “Shut up,” he muttered.

“I’m not saying anything.”

 

The angels were waiting for them in their motel room when they arrived.

“Who’s the new guy?” Sam asked casually, tossing his bag on a bed and following it down, letting his long limbs arrange themselves with subconscious ease.

“This is my brother, Uriel,” Cas answered.

Dean stood tense in the doorway, still swinging open in the summer breeze. He shut it with his foot and took a few steps inside, bag still slung high on his shoulder. “What do you need us to do here?”

“The door to Lucifer’s cage is somewhere in this town. It’s shielded from angels; we need you and your brother to find it,” Uriel told him. “It is imperative that you do so immediately.”

He disappeared as soon as he finished speaking, clearly not looking for an argument.

“Can we sleep first?” Sam asked from his place on the bed, his eyes already closed as he shuffled in closer to the mattress.

Cas looked conflicted before answering slowly, his words clipped. “I do believe that would be alright. You need to be well rested.”

Dean moved to say something else but Castiel followed the lead of the other angel and disappeared.

“‘It was just drinks,’ you said. ‘It was just business,’ you said,” Sam mumbled mockingly without moving from his comfortable looking position on the bed.

He laughed when Dean removed his shoe and threw it in Sam’s directly, and laughed harder when it missed and bounced harmless off the empty half of the bed before landing on the floor in front of the nightstand.

 

“So, if you were God, where would you hide the entrance to the cage you put your most rebellious archangel in?” Sam asked over breakfast the next morning, shoving a bite of his omelette into his mouth and gesturing towards Dean with his fork.

Taking care to exaggerate his movements, Dean picked up his napkin and whipped imaginary food off his face. “I’m not the best one to ask,” he muttered. “According to Cas and Uriel, the big man put it in the same town where Michael’s ‘true vessel’ was born,” he gestured to himself, “so… I dunno. Maybe slap a cemetery over it? Or some sort of… religious monument?”

Sam took a booklet out of his pocket, the _Official Tourist Guide to Lawrence_ according to the cover, and spread it out on the tabletop. He then reached over and grabbed a red crayon from the cup next to the wall and steadied the map with his other hand. With careless ease, he drew quick circles around the small crosses on the map. “There are twelve churches and six cemeteries in Lawrence,” he explained.

Dean groaned. “So we should get started looking, then.”

“No, no need.” Sam struck X’s through all of the circles he’d just drawn. “It’s not in any of them.”

“If you knew that, why’d you ask me?”

Sam shrugged. “Curiosity?”

Dean sighed and ate a bite of his home fries. “Fine, then. Where _is_ the entrance to Lucifer’s cage?”

“Here,” Sam said, circling a field with his red crayon. “There was a church here, up until about nineteen forty when it was demolished to expand the farm land. That’s where Lucifer’s cage opens.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure enough.” When Dean looked discouraged, Sam reached over and hit his shoulder back. “We can check it out, and if it turns up as nothing, you can tell me ‘I told you so’, okay?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Deal. After we’ve finished eating.”

“I’m not wrong, so we can take all morning.”

 

“I told you so,” Dean muttered, digging the toe of his boot into the soft soil.

The brothers stood near the edge of a field, Sam standing slightly in the tree line.

“I know it doesn’t look like much, but that’s the church,” the younger Winchester argued, pointing at a small pile of old stone not far from where they were standing.

“This?” Dean asked, walking over to it and nudging at it slightly with his boot.

Sam’s whole body tensed. “Don’t do that! You don’t know what could happen!”

Dean laughed. “After, what? Hundreds of thousands of years, I don’t think the devil’s gonna come out and play just because I knocked over a pile of rocks.” He nudged the pile again, making the top stone tip slightly.

With quick, clipped steps, Sam walked over to Dean and grabbed his shoulder, roughly moving him away from the small pile. “I told you not to do that.”

“Dude, chill. It’s just _rocks_. How do we even know this is the entrance to Lucifer’s cage, anyway?”

“Can’t you feel it?” Sam asked, looking at Dean with a furrowed brow.

Dean looked around, as if he was expecting someone else to be there with them. Then he looked back at Sam, confused. “No. There’s nothing here, man. Let’s go, okay? Go back to the motel and tell the angels that we couldn’t find it.” He laughed to himself. “S’not exactly like we’re looking for a glowing sign that says ‘Lucifer’s Cage’.”

“What about this?” Sam asked, picking up one of the stones he’d previously been berating Dean for moving. He brought the stone closer to Dean until the older man could see the etchings in it, almost worn down with age. “They’re Enochian. We should bring this with us to the motel to show the angels, then they’ll know if this is the place.”

Dean hesitated to agree, but in the end did concede. They trudged out of the muddy field and back to the impala, parked on a dirt road behind the farm. Dean didn’t notice the shift in the air, like an ancient fear taking hold. He didn’t notice that there were no animals in the bushes. All he noticed was the mud on his boots drying quickly and sticking to the leather.

 

Sam rounded on him as soon as they were through the door. “Call them,” he demanded.

“Why do I have to?” Dean asked indignantly. “What makes you think I can get them to come if you can’t?”

The younger Winchester sighed and pulled a face that Dean recognized from when they were kids, though back then it hadn’t been as practised as the look that he was now on the receiving end of. Dean held up his hands in response, as if prepared to defend himself. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably, looking around for somewhere to sit, before depositing himself in one of the straight-back wooden chairs. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and put his elbows on his knees, leaning forwards slightly. “Uh…. I pray to Castiel, we have some… intel for you. I guess. So, uh, come on down.” He cracked open an eye and glanced around, only to see Sam standing in the middle of the room with a chunk of rock in his hands. Dean was about to stand up and say another ‘I told you so’, but just as he got on his feet there was a now familiar flutter of wings and suddenly there were three people in the room.

Sam gave Dean a cocky grin, and Dean had to resist sticking his tongue out like a five-year-old. Castiel stood like a third point in their strange triangle, looking out of place but too unaware to be uncomfortable about it.

“You called,” the angel stated gravelly.

Dean shifted uncomfortably as the full force of the attention of a millenniums-old angel was focused on him. “Yeah, we did. We think we found the entrance.” Though he was uncomfortable, Dean couldn’t find it in himself to look away from the angel’s gaze.

Sam cleared his throat and the other men both turned to him. Dean felt his cheeks heat up and Sam just gave him a knowing smirk, but otherwise didn’t comment on it. “There’s an old church in a field, there’s markings on the stones like this.” Sam held the stone up and extended it just slightly towards Castiel.

Cas moved towards it slightly, but as soon as he caught sight of the markings he blanched and took a big step away from it, moving his hands up much the same as Dean had before. But now the gesture wasn’t in exasperated resignation, but in true fear. “We have to return that stone to the site as soon as possible. Those corner stones are one of the last barriers between the cage and Earth; even moving one of them could weaken the door considerably.”

Dean’s eyes widened at the news. “Seriously?” He turned to Sam. “I _knew_ you shouldn’t have taken it! You were telling me not to kick the stones, but you went and _stole_ one! We haven’t had it long, so we should be good, right Cas?” Dean was now looking at their newest companion, hoping to get the answers he wanted. He tried not to let his fears show on his face and failed.

The angel looked uncertain, which was a worrying expression to see on the face on a being that was supposed to be all knowing; an agent of fate. “If we return it quickly, it may prevent further damage from arising. But we must go now.” He reached to put a hand on both Sam and Dean’s shoulders but the younger man flinched away.

“You think I didn’t know what I was doing?” Sam asked, letting out a laugh that was hollow but for a deep evil that could be felt underneath it. “Oh, I knew what I was doing. The devil’s gonna come and play.”

Dean stood stock still, unsure of how to react.  His eyes were wide as he stared at his brother, the cold shade of hurt just barely nudging its way in at the edges of his consciousness. Cas broke out of his shock first, moving forwards and grabbing Sam by the bicep tightly. Startled, the younger Winchester released his grip of the stone and it tumbled to the ground, cracking cleanly in two.

And, in an instant, they were gone. Dean stood alone in the motel room with a broken rock at his feet.

“Cas!” he yelled desperately, as soon as the angel had disappeared with his brother. “Cas, get back here!”

His cries went unanswered and so, at a loss for what else to do, he scooped up the pieces of stone and grabbed the keys to the impala. Slipping behind the driving wheel felt natural, and he tossed the stone into the passenger seat. He’d only gotten to drive the impala a handful of times before he’d gone to Sonny’s, and he recalled those memories as he sat in the drivers seat again. It still smelt like gunpowder and leather, still smelt like his father, and if he closed his eyes, breathed in, and concentrated he could almost feel John in the seat next to him giving him orders.

But Dean had gotten good at pushing away the memories of those he’d lost, so he opened his eyes, breathed out, and started the car.

 

Cas was at the motel again when Dean returned, sitting in the same seat as the man had been when he’d prayed. The angels head was bowed, elbows on his knees and hands resting idly in the empty space.

“What did you do with Sam?” was the first question out of Dean’s mouth.

The figure in the chair took a deep breath but didn’t look up. “I am a soldier of God. I take orders and I obey them _exactly_. I raised you from perdition and I returned you to your brother, but now…” Cas looked up at Dean. “I have doubts, Dean.”

The man pulled out the other chair from the table and brought it next to Cas, sitting so that their knees where touching. “What about?” he asked simply.

“How did my Father not know Sam was working for Lucifer? And if He did know, why did He let it continue?” He sighed and hung his head once again. “I don’t know much of anything, anymore.” Cas let out a humourless laugh.

Dean reached over and placed a hand on his knee reassuringly. “There’s gotta be a reason. But… where is Sam now?”

Cas licked his lips and Dean’s eyes tracked the movement, though the object of his attentions didn’t notice. “I took him to be questioned by the other angels. He will be alright, I assure you, but we need to know what he knows. You… understand, yes?” With this, Cas looked up and met Dean’s eyes again, looking unsure and frightened.

“Yeah, I get it. He’s… dangerous, right? A threat.”

“Yes.”

They sat in silence, unmoving, for a few minutes before Dean realized he’d never moved his hand and he didn’t feel inclined to do so once he noticed it. He knew he had to, however, so with an almost aching carefulness he started to lift his hand upwards, but it was captured by softer palms and kept immobile.

When Dean looked up, Cas was already looking at him.

“I’ve had other doubts,” the angel stated, gaze unwavering.

Dean swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Yeah? What are they?”

Cas opened his mouth as if to answer but quickly shut it and looked away from Dean. “Nothing,” he answered. “They’re – nothing.” He shook his head minutely to accent the fact he was trying to convey.

“Are you sure?” Dean asked, brows furrowed. “You know you can talk to me, man.” He laughed humourlessly. “I’ve been through a lot of shitty things in life, so I think I understand the human condition.”

The angel gave him a small smile without looking up and squeezed his hand lightly. “I know. And I may tell you when this is over, but now is not the time.” Cas took a deep, steadying breath and, with what seemed like more effort than needed, pulled his hands from Deans.

And, for the second time that day, Dean was left confused and alone in a motel room. With a groan, he leaned back in his chair and extended his legs forwards, letting his head flop back. He hoped that this wasn’t becoming a pattern.

 

Dean heard the flutter of wings before he opened his eyes. With a groan, he tossed one arm over his face. “What do you want?” he demanded, not bothering to check who would be speaking to him.

“We were hoping that it wouldn’t come to this,” starts a familiar voice. Dean recognized it as belonging to the angel Uriel.

The words interested Dean, and he shifted to his elbows so that he was propped up enough to see the whole room, though wasn’t yet entirely sitting up. With bleary eyes, he could see Uriel and, slightly behind him, Castiel. “Come to what?” he asked, eyes darting between the men. “What’s going on now?”

Castiel stepped out to the side slightly so that he was more in Dean’s field of vision. “We didn’t think it would get this far,” he said. “We didn’t know Sam was working for Lucifer. We hoped you alone would be enough…” he trailed off and for a moment, Dean could have sworn he saw a flicker of human emotion in Castiel’s blue eyes.

Dean sighed. “What do you want from me?” He resisted the urge to fall backwards and press the palms of his hands into his eyes, just barely.

“Dean, you are the one true vessel of the archangel, Michael,” Castiel started, “if and when Lucifer breaks free of his cage, we will need you to agree to house Michael so that he can win the fight for heaven.”

“No,” Dean replied instantly. “I’m not gonna be a puppet to stop the apocalypse, so stop. I’ll help you in any other way you need me to, but I’m not gonna do _that_.”

Uriel looked as put-upon as an angel possibly could, shifting on his feet and looking upwards as if in prayer. After a moment, Dean’s sleep-fogged mind realized he probably _was_ praying. “If you will not say yes to Michael, then we will need you to retrieve the Michael sword.”

Dean blinked his eyes in confusion. “The _what_ now?”

“The Michael Sword,” Cas repeated.

“Yeah, I got that part. I didn’t realize it was a real _thing_. And, what, you _lost_ it?”

Both angels looked uncomfortable. “We did not lose it,” Uriel corrected. “It was… stolen from us, nearly a millennia ago. Lilith, Lucifer’s first demon, stole it from us and hid it somewhere on earth that we haven’t been able to detect.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Oh- _kay_. But what if it’s at the bottom of the ocean? I can’t exactly swim down there.”

“If it were at the bottom of the ocean, any protective sigils would have eroded away by now and we would be able to find it,” Castiel informed him.

“Top of Mount Everest,” Dean tried.

“That would be too close to heaven. It will be hidden somewhere that is level with the sea,” Uriel interjected.

With a sigh, Dean fell back and succumbed to the urge to rub his eyes. “How will I even start looking?” he asked.

But the angels were already gone.

 

Since the angels weren’t there to tell him otherwise, Dean started with breakfast at a diner a few blocks away. Then he opened his laptop on the small motel-room table and stretched his legs out underneath it, typing a simple search into Google: _Michael Sword_.

The search turns up too many results, and none of them are helpful to him. Dean wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it was something more definite.

“Where the _fuck_ am I supposed to start looking for this?” he asked the empty air of the motel room. “What do you want from me?”

There was no answer, and Dean pretended he wasn’t surprised by standing up forcefully and pushing over the chair. He didn’t know who he was pretending for – maybe himself, maybe the ghosts that live inside his head. “Cas!” he says into the empty motel room, voice annoyed. “Cas, get your feathery ass down here!”

Nothing happened and Dean told himself that he didn’t expect it to, without knowing why he was lying. He didn’t think of the other day when Cas confessed that he’d had doubts – he didn’t think about what the other angels might have done to Cas if they’d found out he wasn’t the perfect mold that they wanted. Dean told himself he wasn’t worried.

He was just beginning to dig too deep and ask why he kept lying to himself when he was startled out of his mind by the flutter of wings. Dean turned on his heel and came nearly face to face with a wrathful scowl. “What is it, Dean?” asked the familiar, deep voice. Dean wondered idly if forcing an angel into a human body affected the vocal cords, because Uriel spoke like he’d swallowed a storm, too.

“You wanted me to find the Michael Sword, right?” Dean demanded. “But I don’t know where to start! What does it look like? Where did you last see it? Give me _something_!” He resisted the urge to pound his fist against the table, but it was a close call. Dean curled his fingers into his palm and clenched hard.

If angels could feel, Dean thought, then Cas was ashamed. Though Dean stared him in the face, Cas wasn’t looking up. He kept his eyes fixed on the old, grey carpet as he spoke. “There is no Michael Sword, Dean. I came to you in a dream, don’t you remember? I gave you a note, I asked you to meet me, but you never came. I was going to tell you then – there is no sword.”

Dean felt his mouth open as if to respond, and then he immediately snapped it shut. The room was silent as Dean composed his thoughts. “What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew the question was useless. “If there’s no sword, why did you ask me to look for it?”

“Dean,” Cas said, voice almost pleading. “Dean, _you_ are the ‘Michael Sword’. There is no ‘sword’ in the sense that you can comprehend – only his true vessel, which is an extension of himself much like a sword is to a human. You are his true vessel.”

“And I have to _find_ myself?” Dean was confused and could feel the rage boiling up in his gut, threatening to send steam out of his ears. “What does that even _mean_ , Cas? Tell me, because I don’t know!”

Cas was calm as ever, still refusing to meet Dean’s eye no matter how hard the Winchester tried. “They’re distracting you, Dean, can’t you see?” he asked brokenly. “You didn’t want Michael to use your body as his vessel, and this is how they’ve decided to respond. They’re _playing_ you – they want you to busy yourself looking for the sword so that you become so desperate you say yes.”

“Why are you telling me this?” the man asked. “Aren’t you on their side, Cas? Why would you want me to know about any of this?”

Finally, _finally_ , Cas looked up and met his eyes, a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth but not going further. “Because I don’t know that I can trust a heaven that manipulates humans to reach their goals,” he answered. “Because I’ve seen your soul, I’ve held it in my hands, and it is pure. I will do anything and everything to keep it that way.”

Cas disappeared before Dean could process that statement and Dean gave in to his earlier temptation, banging his fist once against the table and watching as tremors flexed their way down the legs. Despite the disturbance, it stayed upright.

 

PART4

Dean drove all night back to where he’d started – the cemetery he’d crawled out of. He arrived in the dead of night and parked the impala outside the gates. His goal was to be in and out quickly, to move so fast no one would see or recognize him. Dean doubted that anyone would be out and about in the middle of the night, but anything was a possibility. Couldn’t be too careful when you were dead, after all.

He found Robin’s headstone easily with his flashlight and just stood in front of it silently for a few minutes. There was a bouquet of flowers sitting there, but they were wilting. For a moment, he wished that he’d brought something, but he abandoned the idea almost as soon as it occurred to him – people would notice, and he didn’t want to leave a trace. He’d left enough marks on Robin’s life; he didn’t have the right to leave them on her death, too.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he thought to say. He could have almost kicked himself for it. “I love you, you know that, right?” he asked the headstone. “I wasn’t in love – no use saying that now that you’re gone. But I did love you – _please_ know that. Cas said he visited you in heaven, he said that you knew, but I wanted to tell you myself. Felt you deserved that much, you know?”

Dean sighed and sat himself down on the cold ground, tangling his free hand in the grass and keeping the flashlight trained on her name with the other. “You were my best friend, Robin, and I… I need a friend right now. Sam – I met him again, by the way – he’s working for or with the devil, I don’t know. And then there’s Cas… you met him, right? Did he tell you he’s the one who brought me back?” Dean shook his head slowly, with a humourless laugh. “There’s angels, Robin; there’s really angels. I never believed you, but you were right all along.” He swallowed. “I think you were my angel. You were so selfless – you never asked anything of me, never expected me to be more than what I was. I hope you’re at peace – God knows you deserve it.”

He sits in silence for a while, contemplative, before he speaks again, choosing his words carefully. “The angels expect things of me – they expect me to save them. I don’t think I’m up for that; I couldn’t even save _you_ , let alone the whole world!” Another laugh. “But then there’s Cas, and he’s… different than the other angels. He reminds me of you, sometimes, you know? The way you could always see right through me – well, he can do that, too. I think you’d like him. I think maybe I do, too.”

Dean sat there until the cold started to seep into his limbs, until he started to stiffen and ache where he sat. He didn’t know why he waited there – maybe for some sort of sign that Robin heard him. It didn’t really matter, anyway, as he groaned and pushed himself up off the ground. He kissed his fingers and leaned down to press them against the top of her headstone. “I’m sorry, Robin. Sorry I could never love you like I was supposed to. I hope you forgive me.” With that, he swung around and walked out of the cemetery.

He noticed his passenger as soon as he slipped into the impala, but Dean didn’t say anything until they were on the highway.

“How long were you here waiting for me?” he asked.

Castiel looked forwards as he answered. “Since you entered the cemetery.”

“Why?”

“Because even though you know now what the others have planned for you, you have to play along. You cannot risk them thinking either of us knows what they want.”

Dean scoffed. “Why does it matter, Cas? If we know, but can’t do anything about it, how are we going to change the outcome?”

It looked as if Castiel didn’t have an answer for that. “I suppose we’ll find out when the time comes.”

“Making it up as we go,” Dean muttered. “That’s something Robin used to say to me, you know. The two of us were ‘making it up as we go’ – what with the restaurant and our marriage. We never really knew what would happen next.” He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “I should probably stop talking about her, right? I’m dwelling. But I – I think I’m starting to move on,” he admitted, glancing sideways at Cas.

The angel in the passenger seat looked right back at him, gaze steady. “I think that you are the only one who can decide how best to ‘cope’.”

Dean laughed. “That’s real deep for someone that doesn’t feel.”

Cas answered with a grimace. “I told you – I have doubts. I have emotions, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean asked, raising his eyebrows. “What kind?”

The angel pressed his lips together in a thin line. “All of them, Dean. I feel everything.”

“That sucks, man. I’m human, I’ve spent my whole life feeling this shit, and sometimes….” Dean sighed. “Sometimes I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing.

“No, you don’t,” Cas contradicted, not sharply but firmly. “As much as emotions can be confusion, you’d never wish that they would all go away.”

Dean glanced over at Cas in the passenger seat. “You think you can speak for me? You don’t know what I’ve been through; if I could turn it all off, I would.”

Cas licked his lips. “I don’t think you would.”

“You don’t _know_ me, Cas!” Dean told him harshly. “You can read my thoughts or whatever, and you brought me back to life, but you _don’t know me_.”

There was silence in the car for a few beats as Dean took slow breaths to calm down. He was on the verge of trying to take back his words, regretting them, when Cas spoke up softly. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know you at all. Goodbye, Dean.”

Dean turned up the radio to fill the silence.

 

There was an open bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a pack of cigarettes missing three lying next to it. Dean was passed out fully clothed over the covers, dead to the world. It took only a flutter of wings to startle him awake, and he found himself sitting up on the motel bed looking at Uriel and an unfamiliar angel.

“Where’s Cas?” was the first coherent thought that Dean had, and it came out of his mouth without going through any filters.

“He’s busy. He cannot always be taking care of _you_ ,” Uriel informed him. The other angel stood stock still behind him, feet a shoulder-width apart and arms clasped in front of him like a Secret Service agent.

Dean groaned and leaned forwards slightly as his hangover really hit him and he felt the pounding in his skull. “What do you need from me?” he asked warily.

Uriel looked displeased at his state, though Dean figured Uriel looked displeased all the time so he didn’t take it as a personal offence. “The Michael Sword. We’re ‘checking in’ on your progress. Have you been able to locate it yet.”

“No – it would help if you flying monkeys gave me a starting place,” he grumbled, rubbing his temples.

“We can’t do that, Dean,” the unknown angel informed him, speaking up now for the first time. He looked eager; a little green around the gills. Dean had seen enough teens on their first job, eager to please, to recognize one here. Though this angel was probably unfathomably old, only young by angel standards, he had the look. “Just as you do, we have no idea where it is.”

Dean groaned. “I thought angels were all-knowing.”

Both men looked at him with exasperated expressions. “We know all that is not hidden from us,” Uriel told him, making Dean throw up his hands in disbelief.

“I figured that much, thanks. How the fuck is the most important object in existence _hidden from you_?”

“Lucifer took the sword when he fell,” Uriel explained. “Therefore, we cannot find it. He knew how to hide it from us.”

Dean nodded incredulously. “Uh-huh. Great. How do you expect me to find something that you can’t?”

Once again, the younger angel spoke up. “Because you are the Righteous Man.” He spoke with reverence, as if that title meant everything – and maybe it did, but Dean didn’t feel like he deserved to be anything to anyone, let alone everything to angels.

“I don’t even know what that _means_!” Dean replied, frustrated.

Uriel looked at him impassively. “You will learn.”

There was a flutter of wings and they were no longer there. Dean was beginning to realize angels were fans of dramatic exits.

 

Considering that he knew the search for the Michael Sword was a wild goose chase, Dean decided to stay in the motel. He laid back down and tried to think his way _around_ his situation – tried to think of ways to get out unscathed. When he came up with nothing, he went to get himself food. Sitting alone in the diner, Dean was left with time to think, and he thought back to the last time he spoke to Cas.

Looking back, Dean felt bad for what he’d said, but he still meant it. Cas didn’t know him, and he didn’t know Cas. Not really, not in a way that counted or mattered. And it wouldn’t matter regardless, since they were facing the end of the world, and the apocalypse doesn’t stop for budding friendship, let alone the possibility of something else.

Dean stopped those thoughts before he got ahead of himself. _It doesn’t matter,_ he coached himself. _It doesn’t make a difference._

Except that it did – it made a big difference, and Dean wasn’t sure how to cope with that. He put aside speculation on what Cas did or didn’t feel and turned his gaze inside. Dean was familiar with love and emotion, he understood going out of your way to make someone else happy at your own expense, but he didn’t know what it was to be in love.

A long time ago, he thought he was in love. He told himself he was, again and again, until it became the truth – but it wasn’t, it never was. As much as he’d cared for and loved Robin, he’d never been _in love_ with her, and since he’d been with her since he was a teenager he’d never had the opportunity to fall for someone else. Dean could hardly believe he was in his thirties and asking himself _what is love?_ – he thought he knew the answer already.

Dean finished and paid for his food, then walked outside and sat in the driver’s side of the impala. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, putting the key in ignition but not turning the car on.

“Cas, buddy,” he started, speaking out loud, “where are you?”

“I’m right here,” spoke up a voice from the back seat.

Dean jumped and turned around to look Castiel in the eye. The angel sat in the middle of the backseat looking at Dean like he hadn’t almost given the other man a heart attack. “Jesus Christ, Cas,” he muttered, pressing a hand flat over his chest as if that could calm the beating. “You can’t just _do_ that to a guy!”

“My apologies. I thought you were requesting my presence. I can leave now, if you wish.” Cas made no move to leave and just continued watching Dean curiously.

Dean rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair, moving his eyes back to the windshield. “No, no; stay. Just… I dunno don’t suddenly appear in my back seat next time I call you, okay?”

Cas nodded earnestly. “Okay.”

“C’mon up here, man – it’s easier to talk to you if you’re next to me,” Dean instructed, waving one hand towards the passenger seat. Within moments, it was occupied by nearly six feet of angel. “Dude,” Dean repeated sternly, taking more deep breaths to calm himself.

Castiel tilted his head to the side and looked at Dean inquisitively. He opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but Dean cut him off with a gesture. “Just leave it, man. We can talk about personal space later.”

When Cas nodded, Dean finally started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “Why did you call me, Dean?”

Dean shifted uncomfortably, running a hand through his hair. “I was just, uh… I was thinkin’. The angels, Uriel and this other guy, they talked to me again about finding the Michael Sword, but, Cas… if the Michael Sword is me, what am I supposed to do? I don’t know how to even _pretend_ to start looking; I don’t know if I even _want_ to. I’m just so confused, Cas.” He wanted to ball his hand into a fist and slam it against the steering wheel, but he didn’t – he just tightened and adjusted his grip, biting the inside of his cheek and keeping his eyes trained on the road ahead.

“You can’t say yes to them, Dean,” Cas begged, sounding more distraught to Dean’s ears than he’d thought was possible for an angel. “You can’t let Michael use you.”

“Why not?” Dean laughed brokenly. “Why does it matter? Sam is God-knows-where, Robin is _dead_ , hell, _I_ should be dead, too.” He sighed. “If I let him take over, then I won’t have to feel anymore.”

Cas reached over and gripped Dean’s arm, almost making him swerve into the oncoming traffic lane. Lucky for them, there was no oncoming traffic. “You _can’t_ , Dean – promise me you won’t.”

Dean glanced over at him. “Why not, Cas? Why do you care? I’m just a guy; I’m nothing special.”

“You’re the Righteous Man,” Cas informed him, much like the other angel had before. Dean thought maybe he understood what it really meant when coming from Cas. “I raised you from Hell, Dean; do you understand what that entails? We have a profound bond, you and I.”

Dean didn’t know what that meant, not really, but he knew what he wanted it to mean.

“You can’t – we can’t –” Dean sighed again and shook his head as if to reorganize his thoughts. “I’m doomed, Cas – there’s no good way out for me.”

“Then I will follow you wherever you end up.”

 

Inias was bubbling, ecstatic. He was being allowed to go with Uriel to speak to the Righteous Man, the Michael Sword, in Castiel’s place. He didn’t ask why Castiel wouldn’t be going – he didn’t want to know. The young angel was just glad he was getting to go on a real mission.

The Righteous Man was nothing like he’d expected – Dean Winchester was foul mouthed and bad tempered and inconsiderate of them and their status. But still that didn’t dull the glowing vision he had in his mind of Michael’s true vessel, who must be pure somewhere in his soul.

And then, when he and Uriel returned to Heaven, he was told to follow Castiel wherever he went. Again, he wasn’t told why, and again he didn’t ask. He ended up sitting, veiled, in the back of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. Castiel was there with him, but wasn’t aware of his presence.

Then the Righteous Man opened the door and got in, fidgeted for a few minutes, and then prayed for Cas who materialized instantly in the back seat before moving to the front next to Dean Winchester. Watching the man and the angel talk was like watching Bathsheba tempt King David all over again, speaking to him sweet words and swaying him from the path of God.

Inias listened to their conversation intently, becoming concerned at the things Dean Winchester knew. He realized that Castiel must have told him. And then Castiel begged for Dean Winchester to not let Michael use him, and Inias was outraged. He almost let his presence be known then, but he knew he needed to listen further. He needed to know everything that Castiel was up to.

When the conversation was over, Inias was once again bubbling and full of excitement; he had something to tell Uriel when he returned to Heaven. He had just what they needed to make the Righteous Man beg to be used as Michael’s vessel.

 

As a human, Dean didn’t fully understand what it meant to be the object of the full force of an angels’ attention. His mind couldn’t comprehend the love and loyalty that went into that, couldn’t understand that Cas really would follow him anywhere and do anything he asked. He didn’t know what it meant for an angel to turn their gaze from God and focus on a human. If he tried, if he could even _begin_ to comprehend it, then it would burn him up from the inside out. It would be like looking into the abyss of space and having _something_ look back – incomprehensible, too big to fathom, and impossible to deal with.

He dealt with it in the only way the human mind could – he pushed the notion out of his mind and ignored it as soon as Cas was gone. _It doesn’t matter_ , he reminded himself. _It doesn’t make a difference._

But Dean knew that he was lying to himself.

 

The angels were already in his hotel room when Dean got back. Uriel and the unknown one standing in the middle of the room, facing the door. Dean wondered vaguely how long they’d been waiting there. He hoped that it had been a while. Then again, he thought, angels probably didn’t have the same concept of time as he did. It probably made no difference to them if they’d been waiting there for five minutes or since the dawn of time itself.

“What is it,” he bit out, nearly in a growl.

It was Uriel who spoke up. “Your brother has escaped,” he explained without preamble. “We have reason to believe he has agreed to be used as Lucifer’s vessel. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Dean shook his head and threw up his hands. “No, I don’t, actually. I don’t know _anything_ anymore, because you won’t tell me anything! What am I supposed to understand here?”

“Since you were unable to find the Michael Sword, you must agree to be the vessel, Dean. It’s too late for another option – you have to say yes.”

He was shaking his head even bore the angel had finished speaking. “No.”

Uriel looked shocked, as if the concept of ‘no’ was so utterly foreign to him that he didn’t know how to deal with it. And, Dean figured, that was probably fairly accurate. Angels took orders, they didn’t disobey. Soldiers marching in lines and doing as they were told. “If you don’t agree, the world will end. Lucifer will cover the land and seas in fire, sparing none. Not even you will escape his wrath, Dean Winchester.”

“Yeah, and I get that, I do, but I’d rather die being me then as a puppet for your war,” Dean informed him. He felt the strength of his words and believed them; he felt the belief that Cas had in him urging him to make this decision. If he died, he would die knowing an angel put more faith in him than in God, and that he hadn’t let that angel down. He’d die knowing someone believed in him.

The angels were both tensed, as if this verbal dispute was a physical fight. Shoulders squared, faces ahead. But the young one looked troubled, unused to having to school his expression like his companion. Uriel remained impassive, like the eye of a storm. Things were spinning around him but he himself remained unchanged. “We have Castiel.” He spoke with his voice of thunder, shaking loose what little understanding Dean had been starting to regain.

Those three words were all it took to break Dean’s resolve, iron clad as it was. He felt like he was being swept away with the undertow, like his legs had given out under him. And maybe they had – he wasn’t entirely sure of anything anymore. If Cas wasn’t there to believe in him, then what did he have? If Cas wasn’t there to give him a reason to stay human, a reason to feel, then why _not_ say yes? The world was coming to an end, and he could help stop it. The price would be the belief of someone he cared for, but he’d lose that gladly if it saved the angels’ life. Hell, saving the world wasn’t too shabby of a thing if he could pull it off. But much to his own chagrin, that wasn’t the most forefront of the contributing factors to his decision.

In that moment, he realized what being in love felt like and how it felt having the possibility of it taken from him. A single word managed to escape him like a punch to the gut. “Fine,” he gritted out. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “Yes, I’ll let Michael use me to fight in the war. But I have conditions.” Dean felt his resolve slowly pull back together and strengthen.

“We will be glad to fill them,” the unknown angel told him eagerly. Uriel looked at him harshly but didn’t say anything to contradict his words. Dean took that as a good sign.

“You have to let Cas go,” he demanded. “I _have_ to know you’ve let him go – that he’s alright.” Dean licked his lips. “And I have to survive this. Promise me those two things and I will do anything you ask.”

Uriel’s jaw twitched uncomfortably. “We cannot promise you that you will survive, Dean. We cannot predict the outcome of the coming battle any more than you can, though we can promise you that, should we win, Michael can leave you unscathed. His Grace will not destroy you. For I know the plans I have for you,” the angel declared, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

“Jeremiah, 29:11,” Dean muttered bitterly. “That’s a _quote,_ not a promise. But that’s semantics now, isn’t it?” He sighed. “You _can_ let Cas go, right? If Michael’s gonna use me, that’s my last wish. You let him go.”

“Yes, Dean. We can let him go.”

Dean nodded slowly, taking a deep breath in through his nose. “Good,” he said. “Good.” He let out his breath. “Then yes,” he looked around as if to decide which of them he was speaking to before looking Uriel dead in the eye. “Yes, Michael, I will be your vessel.”

A white light covered the room and Dean screamed as a high pitched noise filled the air.

 

Dean came to in a haze of confusion. He noticed immediately that he was, in fact, still himself. Except he wasn't, not really. He looked around the ruined motel room from where he lay in the debris of wood and glass with a groan. He was alone, but he knew instinctively that he wasn't.

_Hello, Dean_ , came a voice deep in his mind.

He didn't need to ask – it was like the knowledge was already his, making his soul heavy with the things he’d gained more than the things he’d lost. The voice in his head was ancient, it was both unaccented and help all inflictions possible at once. It was young and old, androgynous in all ways. 

“Michael,” he replied in almost a growl.

_Of course it's me_ , the voice said lightly. _You said 'yes'; what did you expect?_

Dean wasn't sure how to answer that. “Why haven't you taken over yet?” he asked instead. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

_But first, I must learn_ you _, Dean._

The man wasn't sure he wanted to learn what that meant. He felt the haze starting to take over again and knew that Michael was starting to take control.

_Relax, Dean,_ said the voice. _I'm healing you, physically... as well as otherwise. You are very damaged, Dean, and I can't have a damaged vessel._

“What does that mean?!” Dean demanded, trying to find something that he could direct his anger towards and finding only the inside of his own mind.

_The memories of your father... those must go. Not even I can heal those._ Slowly, Dean felt the memories slip away. His father, John Winchester... the first things that slipped away where his last five years with him, the worst by far. They all disappeared until he was only left with memories of Sam and the impala and a man in the driver’s seat, but he wasn't sure who it was. And then the years before that until there only left the ones from before he was four, before his mother had died and John had lost his way. _And... Robin, next. I can heal those; you'll still remember all your time together. It's a good thing you never loved her or I'd have to remove her, too. Love and hate... they destroy the soul. All too human, those emotions. I have no time for them or a vessel that knows what they are._

“Why are you telling me this?” Dean asked as he felt memories of hospital coffee slip away, the bitter taste on his tongue replaced by sweet hot chocolate.

_Because I need you to know, Dean. I need you to know everything that is happening. It's happening to you, after all._ The archangel made a pensive noise, as if in the back of his throat. Only it wasn't his throat, it was Dean's, and he felt the noise pull itself out of him without his consent. _Wonderful. Soon, Dean, I will take over, and you will get the oblivion you have so badly wanted._  Dean tried to flex his fingers to prove to himself that they were still his own but he found that he couldn't. _Next is dear Castiel. He was always a wayward one, we always knew he would end up where he is. It's just unfortunate that you had to be the one to make him want to fall. Sadly, I'll have to remove everything you know of him. There's no patch for falling in love._

“No!” Dean shouted. “No! You can't make me forget him; I won't let you!”

_It's not your choice, Dean._  

Slowly Dean felt memories being pulled from him roughly, unlike those with John. Those had become as if he was watching them through foggy glass, but this was like someone was tearing holes in the fabric of his life, and if he tried to search for the missing piece he found only an empty void. He was left only with a sense of emptiness, like he was missing something vitally important, but he couldn't even remember forgetting it.

He reached up his hand and observed it like it was a foreign object, and then he realized he wasn't the one moving his hand.

“Strange,” said a voice, and it was his voice but he wasn't speaking. “Free will, it's so human. You hate with so much passion, and you love until it absolutely tears you apart.”

_Let me out!_  Dean shouted silently. He felt like he was pounding on the inside walls of a cage, stuck as he was in the back of his mind.

“Hush now, Dean Winchester. Sleep. It will all be over soon.”

_No! Let me go! Let me out! This isn't what I agreed to!_ But he was starting to forget exactly what it was that he had agreed to. 

“This is exactly what you agreed to, Righteous Man. Sleep now; you will awake unharmed when this is all over.”

It was Michael speaking, except that it was Dean's voice. He was starting to lose track of where he ended and Michael began. 

“Good,” said Dean. No, Michael. “Sleep.”

Dean's voice, but Michael's words, except was that even true? Who was who? Michael snapped his fingers and Dean's clothes were cleaned of dust and debris. Michael grimaced at the old jeans and older flannel shirt. “I would change to something... better, but there's no time.”

It was Michael speaking. Dean struggled to hold onto the ledge of his self, the edge of his consciousness, but he could feel himself slipping into Michael.

“Good,” Michael said again. “We must be off.”

It was only Michael. He had always been Michael.

 

Michael brought himself to an empty field in the blink of an eye. Somewhere in the distance was a ruined church, the door to Lucifer’s cage, but it was too far for the human eye to see.

“Brother,” he called loudly, his earthly voice seeming to bounce off rocks and trees and reverberate through the earth. He called out, too, with his celestial voice, and that reached farther and wider. Wherever Lucifer was, he’d heard the summons. “We have to end this.”

Lucifer appeared much the same way as his brother had. The field had been all but empty, save for one man, and as suddenly as change in a gust of wind, there were two, standing far apart but looking each other in the eye.

To anyone who didn’t know better, Lucifer looked like none other than Sam Winchester, but Michael could see through to his Grace, much as his opponent could do to him. As sure as he’d been on the day of their creation, he was standing across from the, since fallen, archangel.

“Why?” Lucifer asked with a laugh. “Join me, brother, and we could rule the world!” he threw is arms open wife to gesture at the vast expanse of grass like it was an empire, theirs for the taking. “We could rule over _all_ of these _disgusting_ creatures, eradicate them or enslave them. Whatever we wish! We could make all of this _ours._ ” He looked at Michael imploringly, trying to convince his brother with words alone to join him. Trying to convince him through a look that they could work together to take everything down – that they could be brothers as they’d once been. Rulers of an empire, forged in flames and dirt.

Michael shook his head, shutting his eyes and almost turning away so that he wouldn’t have to see the look on Lucifer’s face. “No,” he said. “No, it’s over; we can’t go on like this. We have to end this, here and now.”

“But which of us will deal the first blow?” Lucifer taunted. “Which of us is _strong_ enough? It isn’t you, surely. You and you’re sense of _duty_ , your _love_ of our Father’s most unsophisticated creations. And me….” He laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “I don’t want to fight you, Michael.”

“Nor I, you,” Michael agreed. “But I will kill you if I have to.” Just for a moment, a heavenly glow emanated from him and it almost looked as if he held a sword and his vessel’s light brown hair lit up like a halo.

The two stood off, face one another in silence as the sun started to go down. It was a test of wills; their cards were on the table but who would fold first? All that was left to know was which of them would give into the decadent sense of battle that hung in the air around them. Two soldiers standing off, it wasn’t so much an ‘if’ as a ‘when’ to see when the fight would starts.

Neither of them wanted to fight the other, complete the age old story of brother pitted against brother. Despite Lucifer’s rebellion, they’d ended up there in the field, following their Father’s will to the letter. The agents of fate were the pawns of destiny.

They meet in the middle, each taking quick steps towards their brother. Michael grabbed hold of Lucifer’s lapel and pulled him in, using his vessel’s muscle memory and his own knowledge of human fighting to throw a right hook at the taller one’s nose.

Lucifer reeled, his vessel instinctively bringing a hand up to touch the now gushing appendage. He recovered quickly and came back with a punch of his own, landing it against the side of Michael’s face. The shock caused him to let go of his brother’s jacket and stumble slightly.

Michael pulled his feet back together under him and lunged forwards, pushing a fist hard into Lucifer’s gut. A gasp above him lights a feral grin on his face as he knows he’s met his target. He quickly slides in and wraps his arms around Lucifer’s waist to pick him up and drop him onto his back, landing him on the cold earth as the first rain drops begin to fall. Michael scrambled up and straddled his brother’s stomach, placing one hand next to his head and bringing the other fist down on Lucifer’s face again.

Instinctively, Lucifer turned and closed his eyes to take the blow, pausing only for a moment to assess the damage before bucking up and using his momentum to end up on top. His first punch landed solidly in Michael’s stomach and the archangel looked up to the sky with a gasp, watching as rain fell and clouded his vision. It was coming faster now, heavier. The cold rain coated their sweaty skin as Lucifer brought his second punch down on Michael’s ribs. They cracked under his fist easily, like a child snapping Popsicle sticks. Michael wheezed, the air rushing out of his broken chest at a high speed, before the third punch landed on the side of his jaw.

With a renewed passion, Michael pushed Lucifer back into the mud. “Look at where you are!” he laughed, though it came out pained due to the pressure slowly building in his chest. He coughed and blood sputtered out, dripping down his chin and falling into the mud below them. “In the mud, like the humans you so cruelly condemned. We are no better than them.” He reached up and tried to wipe the blood off his face but only ended up smearing it. He then brought his bloody fist back down on Lucifer’s nose. The cartilage snapped audibly and the appendage had become slightly depressed into Lucifer’s face.

With a glare unsuitable of someone who, if human, would be dead or dying, Lucifer reached up and, with a slight grimace courtesy of his vessel’s nervous system, pulled his nose back out and to centre, wiggling his jaw slightly to make sure it was all aligned. Lucifer pushed and threw Michael into the mud, moving up to sit on his already cracked ribs.

The pressure forced another cough out of Michael, bringing up more blood and spattering his face with it. He could no longer tell if it was rain or blood obscuring his vision; he just hoped that this fight would be over soon. “I am _nothing_ like them,” Lucifer told him. “I am Grace, power – I am the morning star. They aspire to follow _me_ , not you – not _God_.” As he spoke, he reached into Sam’s jacket and pulled out a long, silver blade. It shinned dully with the light of Heaven under the gray clouds.

“Brother, it doesn’t have to be like this,” Michael protests from the ground. He reached up his hands and pressed them against the cold, exposed skin at the base of Lucifer’s vessel’s back.

Lucifer’s lips quirked. “At least we’ll be dying together, won’t we?” he murmured, as Michael started to concentrate his Grace to burn out Lucifer. He knew it would burn out his own in the process, but he’d been willing to lay down his life for this from the start.

Michael dug his fingers into Lucifer’s sides and felt his Grace heating up and boiling to the surface. Lucifer’s eyes started to glow as he raised the blade above his head and brought it down squarely between Michael’s ribs. “Goodnight, _Brother_ ,” he sneered. And then Sam Winchester tossed his head back with a blood curdling scream as his soul burnt along with Lucifer’s Grace. Michael wanted to look away but he couldn’t; it was his penance.

Sam’s body slumped over and Michael pushed him off, getting up on his weak feet and stumbling away before once again falling to his knees in the mud. The rain was starting to let up; he could see the beginnings of a blue sky in the distance. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the Heaven’s.

“Dean!” he cried. “It’s time to wake up!”

 

The moment he was released from Heaven, Castiel found himself on an empty battlefield. He came upon Sam's broken and burned body first and touched his forehead. Castiel found that his soul was at rest, so he moved on. 

Dean was alive, gasping and bleeding out a few yards away. The man caught the eye of the angel and looked away. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry. I - I had to.” He cried out in pain, feeling as if a fire was spreading through his veins. A poisoned blade, he reasoned. Poisonous to angels and humans.

Castiel dropped to the ground and gently pulled the man's upper half into his lap, wrapping him in his arms. “Shh,” he soothed. “You did everything right, Dean Winchester. I'm proud of you.” He met Dean’s eyes and for a moment he could swear he found Grace – not Michael’s, not any angels, but a Grace that came from the human soul.

“I said yes,” he argued.

“You had to,” Castiel responded, voice choked. He wanted to cry but he couldn’t let himself. For Dean's sake.

Dean went to answer but the pain twisted his features and he was left gasping. “I'm sorry, Cas. I'm sorry we never – I never….”

“Shh; it's okay. You can rest, Dean. No regrets.” Castiel smoothed a hand over the man's sandy hair. “I believe in you, Dean Winchester. Until the end.”

Dean couldn't help the laugh that ripped itself from his body, followed closely by a cough that emptied more blood from his lungs. “That's coming sooner than later, Cas.”

The angel smiled sadly. “I will follow you.”

Dean closed his eyes. 

 

He found himself sitting on a dock on a summer’s day. He was alone, but the sound of wings behind him was welcome, making a small smile spread across his face.

“I've been waiting for you,” Dean murmured, tilting his face back to get more sun.

“I know,” responded the angel. “It took me too long to find you.”

Castiel walked over and sat down next to Dean. Much like his companion, he was wearing neither shoes nor socks. His trouser pants were rolled up over his knees, and he only had his white dress shirt on with the cuffs rolled up and the top few buttons undone. His hand landed close to Dean's, so that their fingers were just barely touching at the tips.

“I want to see her,” Dean added absently.

Cas nodded and suddenly they were dressed properly and standing in a living room that Dean recognized. He didn’t think he could forget it, even if he wanted to; it was the living room of the first and only house he and Robin had bought together.

Robin herself was there, alone and smiling softly at him. “It's been a long time,” she greeted.

His answering grin was large and genuine. “Not so long. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” Her gaze shifted over to Castiel. “This is him, right? You talked to me about him.”

“You heard me?” Dean asked, startled.

She shrugged. “Of course. Prayer works for souls, too.”

Dean licked his lips, suddenly feeling awkward. “Yeah, it's him.”

Castiel stood slightly behind him, looking confused as Robin addressed him now. “You and I have something in common,” she told him with a sad smile. “We both love him.” Robin turned to Dean now. “This is important, Dean, and you can't lie to me now. Are you in love with him?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly, looking apologetic. He turned to Cas and took a deep breath. “I love you.” Dean smiled at the conviction he heard in his own voice.

Castiel grinned. “And I, you,” he replied.

Robin looked on fondly. “Good,” she murmured. “I'm glad. I wish you the best, Dean. I have my memories.”

Dean turned to her, broken from his content bubble. “I tried, Robin. Please know I tried.”

“I know. You made my life a good one, Dean. Never think otherwise.”

He nodded and turned away, reaching out a hand towards the angel. “Ready to go?” he asked, green eyes meeting blue.

Cas grabbed his hand, twining their fingers together. “Ready to go.”

Dean breathed out.


End file.
